Rate of sale for iron ingots? I think you mean gold.
I'd be for this definitely. It's a good start for at least right now. We can think about big changes to the economy when we get to the point of needing a new map.

Maybe we never upgrade to 1.8. That'd solve the currency issue but leave us out of all the cool things that update offers.

If we do move to 1.8, we enable player shops so people can farm, craft and barter all without the need to have ores. Open up the world border a bit more to allow better exploring, mining and diversity.

I'm maybe not really knowledgeable in Java, but I know how to do it .
http://ess.khhq.net/cfg/ line 339 (at the moment of writing) is an option to say how long a player can be AFK before he is kicked from the server.

Yeah, it is probarlly true that I afk a lot, but I don't afk at a (OP) gold farm but only my witch farm. That means I'm not creating ton's of entities while afk'ing (not like goldfarms, wich ignore the mobcap).

His point isn't that AFKing at a gold farm (whether OP or not is irrelevant) is bad, he's saying that AFKing period to get anything is bad and I feel the same. It looks like you're getting an unfair advantage over the rest of us who don't/can't AFK for the long periods of time that you do because you are gaining items at an almost alarming rate. What those items are is irrelevant because it's adding to your game. AFKing at a gold farm is, I do believe, worse, but nevertheless I feel it's cheaty no matter what you're doing it for.
Also comic, I wouldn't mind the player shops idea. Maybe we save any economy changes til 1.8? And the big changes for the server reset?

There's always going to be an unfair advantage, and then there's things that are so skewed that it's not a question of fairness but rather a question of if it's right to exploit or not. Right now, nothing is official. Just because I proposed an AFK timer doesn't mean it'll get implemented.

Either way we look at it, changing the economy is a huge change. We could scale it back until a server reset but it's going to impact the current world one way or another.

This whole thing about the currency change is just a battle between the haves and the have-nots. With gold, the only limit to the size of the farm is player distance and minimum entity count. However, mining also has a degree of inequality. One could easily set up a haste II beacon while nobody untrustworthy is online, grab their efficiency V pickaxes, and mine the gold from a good portion of the map; this deprives gold from the new, independent user that had just acquired iron/diamond tools and want to start a town. It takes an eternity; when founding Hodor I did not have fancy tools, and several weeks of mining didn't get me close to the 10,000 denarii needed to found a town. Don't say mining gold to start a town is easy; it takes a while without preexisting resources (most of which acquired via gold farms). Moving to a mining-only economy would make towns much scarcer, depriving Cemetech of the fundamental aspect of freebuild that the community has embraced for years. Nothing would get built in wilderness without it getting destroyed; the Cygnus Museum is a prime example of the tendency to resort to destruction as means of retaliation or making a point. The museum was meant and openly declared as a neutral territory, calling for requests of protection by the administrators even if it meant the plots would be forever locked. However, it was attacked by a particular someone in retaliation for a particular different user succeeding in self-defense. As another example, look at the Edenia Inn as built by members of Atlantia. With no reason other than it being a construction of an enemy nation, an attempt was made to trap it with TNT and blow the entire area to a crater. The ability to protect a build on the server is vital to its existence; the use of an easily renewable resource as currency limits construction to serious Cemetech MC members, while ensuring that builds can be protected. Additionally, such a currency being used to buy non-renewable materials at spawn also guarantees that a destroyed build can be rebuilt.
Charge whatever you want inter-town for the sale and/or return of goods; that is independent of the server's economy. But to keep the freebuild aspect within reach, easy access to the ability to found a town and acquire non-renewable resources prevents resource monopolization and excessive griefing.

This is kind of the issue we have at hand here, making the game fair for "serious ... members" and those without the time.

How about making cobblestone the currency? Or dirt? Or something relatively useless or hated that can't be automatically farmed. This would probably also prevent actual AFK'ing but then again, someone could simply tape their mouse down or make a macro.

Here's an idea for a new economy. Adjust the prices for founding a town, plots and per day rent. Every player gets 200Denarii each Earth day they connect.

• Found a town, 1kD.
• Buy a plot, 150D.
• Upkeep, Plots *100D.

That way can afford to create a town with 5 other members by Day 2. If you want to be proactive and farm for resources, you can and afford that town on day one with the same people or less. I also think we should offer denarii for more things. 1D for cobble, 2D for coal, etc etc. So whatever you have extras of you can sell.

Once we get into the demand stuff, like diamonds and gold, we can have those prices fluctuate. By having player shops or a central auction and request system. Some one can put up gold for sale at 200D and players can bid or a player can ask for gold at 200D and someone can sell it to them. Or perhaps another option.

That was what a server I used to play one (it's dead now) did except for the whole giving players money every day thing. That's a really good idea. I like the idea of having a stock thing going on.

Yeah, stock or public auction sort of thing sound fine. Plots * 100 every day sounds a little steep though, might consume a ton of wealth that could have been better used elsewhere - some places have 100 plots, thats 10,000d a day...? And I was just considering the idea of creating a gold farm-less town, with prices like that I'd need a large gold farm, or these friends to which you refer which I have none. I mean that much upkeep would really slow down the building of new towns in general.

Keep in mind, the prices were just examples. I figured it'd be easier to convey a message with hard prices instead of W, X, Y & Z.

I think that would make sense.

Then where's the challenge? I guess it would prevent people from making cobble boxes in the future but seriously?
I like comics idea. Maybe for upkeep it should be plots*25D? The other two seem fine to me except maybe making the buying a town 2kD? And what about nations? Would those be changed as well?

Well the point is there is no more afk farming and one needs to actually work to get money.

Farming is work if you don't take advantage of the fact that you can get loads of money by AFKing, which is why I think a timer for AFKing would be a good solution in that aspect.

Here is what I believe. I like minecraft because it allows me to create. I love to build, to explore, to bring to life magnificent creations. I enjoy mining and I enjoy PVP. I also enjoy trying to out build my opponent with my creations. I do not however like the idea of having to mine for an hour ever time I need money for a build, or to maintain my town. When I play I want to be able to create, to fight, and to have fun. I dont want to have to worry about the amount of money in my bank account. Thats to much like the real world from which I play this game to escape. I know whats its like to have to make a living, I don't want to include that in my minecraft experience. I started my town on mined gold, that was a fun adventure. Then I built a farm so that I would have to make that adventure over, and over, and over... Some people like that part. It makes them feel like they have worked hard and deserve their pay. THATS GREAT! They can enjoy what they like, I can enjoy what I like. I like the scheming, the building, the spying, the planning, the fights, and so on. I dont want money worries to be included. I have gotten to the point were I don't have to anymore and now I can enjoy the things I like to do.

Wow, there is a lot more response in a shorter time than I could have expected. Thank you for replying, everyone.

I read every single comment, and here are the major topics I see that I'd like to expand on:
►Creating a mining world, versus mining out the current world.
►Ores being the main currency, debating on the value of ingots and other resources.
►Changing monetary amounts for town related expenses.
►AFK ability

With a TL;DR to bring forth the most important points from all of these major topics:
►I would not mind having a mining world to avoid underground mining spam, but also don't mind mining in the current world. It doesn't seem like a bad idea to make a mining world that is like 1000x1000 that is refreshed every couple to few months.
►For the amount of player-hours per month (~1500), the actual percentage of that spent mining (definitely less than 50%), and the amount of gold in the world (~328,000 ores = 10,000+ hours @ 30 ores/hour for 1 player), it'd take over a year to deplete the map based on current activity from all players. Because the actual time spent mining is likely less than 25% of total user time, it's more like 2+ years, which is irrelevant with respect to map expansions and possible map refreshes that would take place in that time period.
►Devalue gold ingots and/or limit drop/spawn rates, but not make them worthless in denarii. I also support the idea of other materials that can be exchanged for a fair amount of denarii, but trading player-to-player seems to work well as a form of that idea that is already present.
►A compromise that would be very feasible for both newer players seeking to start a town, players with smaller towns, and players with larger towns:
►[1] Cutting town startup cost by some percentage, maybe 50% to balance not allowing one/two time users to quickly create a town, but still being able to create a town in not much time if one is to stay with the server for a couple to few hours at least.
►[2] Starting a per-plot upkeep of a very lenient ~1d/plot owned. Small towns pay the usual 100d/day, while large towns would pay more toward 300d/day for owning 200 plots. Smaller towns are very easy to keep running, and large towns even run by one person are still not hard to keep running. Large town owners have 40+ hours/month of gameplay, and even running a large town singlehandedly via mining for gold would only take up less than 20% of overall gameplay-- just a few hours per month. If you envisioned running a large town, you likely intended on playing a reasonable amount of hours regardless. 10,000d (a few hours of work) would keep a 200-plot town running for about a month, which is very fair. This does not oppress the user's creativity with unnecessarily large day-to-day expenses that force them to be active often.
►[3] Price to buy a plot is relatively fair where it is, give or take a little, because it is not oppressive, and the plot upkeep per day would be responsible for what we'd want to accomplish-- a linearly, slightly increasing challenge to running the proportionally larger town.
►The idea of kicking a user off after some time I do not believe in, but I do look down upon those who sit inside a box for their time on the server, and AFK, not wanting to participate in any way with external action. The driving force behind the PvP server from day #1 (http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9882) was to create both creative offensive and defensive PvP. If you're not one to lead raids, then you should build good defenses, while still building a beautiful town.

=====Creating a mining world, versus mining out the current world=====
I am indifferent on whichever way this goes, and would not mind either. I see and understand both sides of the argument. On one hand, I see that over time, layers 5-31 will become swiss cheese in areas from players branch mining for all their gold, which would make a temporary mining world a reasonable solution. On another, I see the mining world taking some amount of configuration and attention, which could be toggled with.

Assuming that a mining world that's like 1000x1000 could be put up and refreshed every couple to few months, it would rid the idea that we might even remotely come close to running out of gold on this server or making areas scarce on gold. I think it would be pretty cool if it was possible to do.

For a map that is 3200x3200 though, I have a hard time seeing that this entire map will be mined out clean or get to the point where it's more difficult to find gold than it 'used to be'. The most efficient way to find the gold without quarrying out an entire volume with a beacon, would be 1 branch mine every 4th block, and laid out in some lattice-structure 9 times down. Each branch of the branch mine would be 3200 blocks in length (which is in and of itself a tedious task), there would be 3200/4 = 800 branches possible horizontally for one layer. In a titled lattice pattern, up to 9 branches can be stacked vertically from layers 5-31 without loss of efficiency or missing ore veins. 800*9 = 7200 branches possible in this world, all in parallel, each 3200 blocks long. It seems fine, aside of any complaints about the underground mess from so many tunnels. I'll dig into this issue in the next part (no pun intended) in regard to how long much this gold lasts if ores are what everyone would have to go after.

=====Ores being the main currency, debating on the value of ingots and other resources=====
Originally, I completely tossed out anything gold from my mind, but frozenfire49 has a good point on gold ores being the retained value, while gold ingots see a decrease in worth (maybe drop value by 80% or something to 10d/ingot?), but are not worthless. (also the idea that it still is a material good, so we should still be able to have gold farms just like iron farms)

If ores were to be dug out by players on the server, a good question brought up by timothy22236, how would the value retain with time, and how long would it take till all of the gold was mined up? I further question on top of this, it's not really if it will happen eventually, but the question is how long it will take-- will it be relevant with the time scales we're working with?

To be very mathematically precise with this to reason it out, I referenced to IRC chat logs over the past month from 05 October 2014 to 06 November 2014. I tabulated all chat lines, filtered out for join and leave times of all users, and added up all the time spent by all players. (Rounding up) This is approximately 1500 player-hours/32 days = ~47 player-hours/day.
If we take the most conservative scenario (fastest resource depletion), we can find the amount of gold there exists (in hours-- you'll see in a second), divide by the fastest mining rate, and divide by hours spent online per day, and derive a number in days till depletion. Because there are 40,000 chunks in the world with an average of ~8.2 gold ores/chunk, we can say that there are about 40,000 * 8.2 = 328,000 gold ores in the world. Assuming 60 ores/hour, faster than most would mine, that would equate to 328,000/60 = ~5500 hours of gold in the world. If there was 1 player, it would take him 5,500 hours. But we need to examine activity by a pool of users, not just one. Using 47 player-hours/day, 5,500/47 = ~116 days before the gold supply is gone. However, this is not true because it's the most extreme, conservative scenario. More realistically, while most would mine closer to 30 ores/hour of gold, and 50% or less of the time spent on the server would be for mining (still very conservative), this introduces a slowness factor of 4. This means that more realistically, it'd take at least 116*4 = ~465 days = ~ 1 year, 3 months. This could even vary to 2+ years if you drop the 50% spent online to 25% or less, since it's assumed that people want to build and not mine all the time.

The point is, we'd be worrying about other map issues such as expanding it and replacing it, before we'd be worrying about running out of resource.
I believe that the gold ore is perfect, as that was originally how money was obtained to begin with, and is a fair, level playing field for everyone. I understand that limiting the gold farms will affect those who are obtaining money at a high rate, and are used to AFKing to get as much money as they'd like, and that it'll be a big step back down. For the fact that the economy will inflate itself extremely at some point in the future, and with respect for everyone to be on a level field, I believe strongly this will be better, as someone who wants to keep a stable economy long-run, and be able to trade without having someone buy out my entire stock with money they earned in little time with hardly any effort. If I was selling 50 diamonds to someone, it doesn't exactly run very well by me knowing that someone bought it with 1 hour of AFK money.

As an effort to try and balance this loss to those who hold their gold farms dearly, I believe that having more than just gold ores would be cool if possible. Trading materials for money (and raiding) seems to work pretty well though. I have been able to get by on the server since April, running a large town without sitting around at a gold farm. I've only mined a few times with a speed II beacon, and lots of trades and raids have been done. In that respect, I don't feel it's as big of a loss to some as it might seem.

=====Changing monetary amounts for town related expenses=====
If gold farm output as currency is devalued to some percentage, depending on what that percentage is, I think the values that are currently listed are relatively good, give or take a little. In light of encouraging constructiveness and creativity rather than having to constantly be in a coal mine trying to fund a town, which I wouldn't want to be doing all the time (agreeing with timothy22236), perhaps the town startup cost can be lower, and the upkeep, if plot-based, should be low. Consider some of the large towns that have 200-250 plots, but may not have 10 active members, which is the case for all of them. Also consider what was able to be created inside such a large town that couldn't have been done in a smaller one. If the upkeep per plot per day is too high, that forces activity from someone almost everyday to keep up with the payments, which shouldn't be the case. Especially with IRL things to deal with, I wouldn't want to be coming on everyday to mine for gold to keep my town barely alive, on the verge of collapsing from lack of money. I'd ideally want to go on a mining trip adventure once in a while. If the upkeep per plot was even 1d/day, 200 plot towns would have an upkeep of 300d/day, including that 100d/day for the town itself. A 10,000d balance would deplete in ~33 days, which seems reasonable if you're a semi-regular user. I even ran the numbers on that too! For large towns that meet criteria for around or more than 200 plots, there is at least 1 active member who has over 40 hours of activity on the server per month. This implies that even at a slower pace of mining, assuming it was done efficiently without slowing down, it'd take a few hours maximum to acquire 10,000d worth of gold. This still enables even a 40 hour/month user to spend 80+% of their time on the server, doing anything else to their heart's desire. Additionally, it wouldn't be bad for smaller towns with one person in any way since it'd be closer to 100d/day, which is what the server runs on currently. Larger towns more likely have more contributing members, and the money due per day would distribute on average (but note what I just said about even one-person large towns in how it's still able to be run with relative ease!).

Dropping the town startup cost by some percentage to encourage free building (50%? Not too low to allow even one-time users to make towns, and not too high to discourage), and introducing a very minimal upkeep per plot to generate a slightly increasing challenge with a bigger town (since more land = more money makes sense) without making it hard to run even as a one-man town, I would agree with. I would also say that some price per plot to buy around the vicinity of the current price is good. The long-term payment per day is what will ultimately drive owning plots.

=====AFK ability=====
I don't think AFK should be disabled on the server. I think that it's okay to AFK, as the main purpose may not be to just print lots of money. In addition, it encourages constructiveness in building resource farms that will self-sustain via redstone. I just don't like seeing when people come onto the server just to AFK all the time and sit inside an enclosed box, being completely against what the main purpose of the map is-- PvP. One does not simply join and expect to never be touched in combat attempts. This is not even specifically offensive if you don't want to attack. To be more precise, I will quote Kerm on this in what was said since day #1 [http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9882]:


i.e. It is about being both creatively offensive and/or defensive gameplay --> sitting in a box all day I feel devalues this. Additionally, I think that since gold farms have originally been respected, they can still be respected by allowing ingots to still be currency, but devalued by a good percentage for those who insist that they really don't want to mine. It may not completely replace mining with AFK farming, which I don't believe should be the case, but it will still assist in a reasonable, moderated way.

I commend you for writing the detailed responses I should be writing. If a mining world ends up getting a majority I vote I think we should put to vote increasing the main world size. If we have a 1000 by 1000 block playing world and a similar size mining world, we should vote for either that or a 2000x2000 playing world.

That's the math I wanted to do and it shows that players can survive purely on mining.

I say we have a poll, with ~200-word descriptions of each available option. Discussion here is too lopsided towards one view.